“Back in the Z is for Zip days…” Julian Hooper.
Tāmaki Makaurau based painter, Julian Hooper, celebrates and interrogates the endlessly iterative nature of the alphabet in this new exhibition featuring paintings, works on paper and a mnemonic alphabet frieze. Hooper is well-known for creating playful and puzzling compositions that slip in and out of geometric abstraction. Over the past decade, his work has developed an idiosyncratic visual language drawing on letters, numbers and symbols. Stylish and stylized, Hooper’s palette is pared back, often black and white, like an ‘old-school blackboard.’
Hooper created his first alphabet painting in 2018, setting a tone and direction for his recent work. Hooper continues to push the physical and conceptual nuances of the alphabet, what it can say, do and conjure on the page. You can ‘read’ his letter paintings – literally and metaphorically. Groups of numbers become faces and portraits, individual letters and words are made strange again.
Hooper says, “I’m much more interested when the form [of the alphabet] challenges the letters. When it seems wrong, when it makes us look at the letter anew.”
The alphabet is a teaching tool, children learn to match the phonetic properties of sounds to individual letters and words. But the alphabet also has a strong history within graphic design, art and typography. Hooper first started designing and copying the alphabet at Intermediate School. His early touchstones include The Speedball Textbook and the posters and lettering of Milton Glaser.
The Letter brings together ten years of Hooper’s painting and drawing practice, alongside new works, highlighting the importance of process, repetition, variation and surprise. The exhibition includes vitrines of Hooper’s sketchbooks and working drawings, and a new foldout alphabet frieze.
Of his alphabet paintings Hooper says, “It’s a project that could go forever.”
Born in Auckland, 1966, of mixed English, Hungarian and Tongan heritage, Hooper has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and Australia since 1990. He received a BFA from the University of Auckland 1989, and an MFA from RMIT, Melbourne in 1999. Hooper's works are held by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Queensland Art Gallery, Australian Catholic University Art Gallery, and the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.
Julian Hooper: The Letter is a City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi exhibition shown at
